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It's nuclear fission. It's always been nuclear fission (well, at least since the '50s) and it will continue to be until we commercialize fusion reactors. Everyt

It's nuclear fission. It's always been nuclear fission (well, at least since the '50s) and it will continue to be until we commercialize fusion reactors. Everything else is nice to have but it's like NIH syndrome.

toomuchtodo 11mo ago
Geothermal is fission, and wind, solar, and batteries are fusion at a distance. In both cases, the failure scenarios are benign vs traditional fission generation. It's fine to keep striving for fusion humans control, but the problem (global electrification and transition to low carbon generation) is already solved with the tech we have today. It took the world 68 years to achieve the first 1TW of solar PV. The next 1TW took 2 years. Globally, ~760GW of solar PV is deployed per year (as of this comment), and will at some point hit ~1TW/year of deployment between now and 2030. Geothermal is a great fit for dispatchable power to replace coal and fossil gas today (where able); batteries are almost cheaper than the cost to ship them, but geothermal would also help solve for seasonal deltas in demand vs supply ("diurnal storage"). https://reneweconomy.com.au/it-took-68-years-for-the-world-to-reach-1-terawatt-of-solar-pv-capacity-it-took-just-two-years-to-double-it/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/it-took-68-years-for-the-world-t... https://ember-energy.org/data/2030-global-renewable-target-tracker/ https://ember-energy.org/data/2030-global-renewable-target-t... I also love geothermal for district heating in latitudes that call for it; flooded legacy mines appear to be a potential solution for that use case. Flooded UK coalmines could provide low-carbon cheap heat 'for generations' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45860049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45860049 - November 2025
- yawaramin 11mo ago
  Failure scenario in modern fission reactors is also benign. Reactors are designed to lock down to prevent any leaks. We deploy solar PV capacity, this doesn't mean we actually get that much power from the deployments. Nuclear fission provides reliable, baseload power, and doesn't require huge battery arrays to compensate for the sun setting or winds calming.
  - toomuchtodo 11mo ago
    Enough renewables are deployed annually to replace the global nuclear fission fleet, year after year, even when accounting for capacity factor derating (to make a like for like comparison). The race is over, and renewables (with batteries) won. If you can find someone unsophisticated to invest in a fission reactor that takes billions of dollars and 10-15 years to build, more power to you. There will be no need for it by 2035-2040 when it prepares to send its first kwh to the grid. (and to stay on topic for this thread, geothermal is a component of this when geothermal potential exists, cost is competitive, and dispatachability is a requirement to push out fossil generation in concert with renewables, hydro, legacy nuclear, battery storage discharge, and demand response) https://www.google.com/search?q=baseload+is+a+myth https://www.google.com/search?q=baseload+is+a+myth https://cleantechnica.com/2025/11/15/coal-killing-sodium-ion-energy-storage-is-coming-to-kill-your-coal-power-plants/ https://cleantechnica.com/2025/11/15/coal-killing-sodium-ion... https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/q3-global-power-report-no-fossil-fuel-growth-expected-in-2025/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/q3-global-power-rep... https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-every-hour-of-every-day-is-here-and-it-changes-everything/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e... https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-every-hour-of-every-day-is-here-and-it-changes-everything/chapter-1-how-batteries-will-unlock-solars-true-po/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e... https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec... https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-energyplus-lcoeplus/ https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/solar-panel-prices-have-fallen-by-around-20-every-time-global-capacity-doubled https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/solar-panel-prices-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44513185 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44513185 (lfp battery storage cost citation in 2025)
    - yawaramin 11mo ago
      > If you can find someone unsophisticated to invest in a fission reactor that takes billions of dollars and 10-15 years to build Unsophisticated investors like the Chinese government? 'Nearly every Chinese nuclear project that has entered service since 2010 has achieved construction in 7 years or less.' https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/chinas-impressive-rate-of-nuclear-construction https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/chinas-impressive-...
- cbmuser 11mo ago
  Look at Electricity Maps and realize that France is the only large industrial country where electricity generation is permanently carbon-free and cheap. https://particulier.edf.fr/content/dam/2-Actifs/Documents/Offres/Grille_prix_Tarif_Bleu.pdf https://particulier.edf.fr/content/dam/2-Actifs/Documents/Of...
  - toomuchtodo 11mo ago
    Yes, but unfortunately that is because it is coasting on decades old labor and capital investment that will not be made again. It is not permanent, as it will cost tens of billions of euros to continue to operate those generators reaching the end of their service life.
  - bryanlarsen 11mo ago
    Norway, Iceland and British Columbia are other examples and are more carbon-free than France is. The latter isn't a country and the former don't count as "large industrial"?
- andbberger 11mo ago
  68 years ago we already had fission plants. the engineering side of energy production has been solved since then, it's all political now
- pfdietz 11mo ago
  > Geothermal is fission Geothermal is not nuclear fission. The heat comes from a combination of primordial heat (from the gravitational energy turned to heat as the Earth formed) and radioactive decay (which is some combination of alpha and beta decays; spontaneous fission is extremely rare.)
klabb3 11mo ago
Ive been very pro nuclear my whole life, but a part of me is disheartened by the mega projects that commercial fission deployments have become (even if the reasons are bad) that’s a problem that nerfs traditional fission. If nuclear remains both political, extremely bureaucratic and requires public investment, it just won’t be the solution, and not because the tech or physics is bad, but the decision makers & investors can no longer organize large infrastructure projects effectively (except maybe China). This is not unique to nuclear. Having smaller scale local power generation, whether it’s SMRs, solar, wind or geothermal, there’s a huge advantage in terms of economy, investment, and politics.
- yawaramin 11mo ago
  Nuclear has broad bipartisan support, and the Trump administration is heavily into it, so I wouldn't count it out just yet. If the various Green parties of the Western world ever come into power though, we are cooked.
  - klabb3 11mo ago
    But that illustrates the point. Most investors don’t want to put money towards something that may be put on indefinite hold depending on political winds. These projects are often much longer than presidential terms.
thinkcontext 11mo ago
It could be but the US and EU have so far been unable to build commercial fission reactors without going 2x+ over budget in time and money. China is having success but even they are not projected to have nuclear account for more than single digit percentages of their generation. Maybe SMR's, thorium, 4th gen, etc will work out, but maybe not.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 11mo ago
  The US Navy consistently builds reactors on-time and in-budget
  - mr_toad 11mo ago
    There’s something to be said for a standardised design with replaceable parts.
  - kragen 11mo ago
    The US and Russian Navies deciding to remain mostly petroleum-fueled is one of the strongest arguments against nuclear becoming very cheap: surely they would do it if it wasn't ruinously expensive, because it eliminates the national security risk of a petroleum blockade and simplifies at-sea logistics immediately.
    - ahmeneeroe-v2 11mo ago
      Don't presume too much about the US Navy's fleet decisions. Using that same logic you could presume that smaller, aged and poorly maintained fleets are advantageous for naval supremacy since that appears to be the choice of the US Navy for a couple generations now. Or you could presume that the complete inability to build a merchant marine fleet was also a strategic advantage!
      - kragen 11mo ago
        It's not just the US Navy. It's also the Russian Navy, the French Navy, the Chinese navy of the PLA, the British Navy, the Indian Navy. If nuclear power were cheaper than oil, or anything other than much more expensive, at least one of those would have gone all-nuclear.
tim333 11mo ago
Solar + wind is being installed at about 100x the rate of fission because it's so expensive. And the differential is only increasing. installs: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/01/13/the-fastest-energy-change-in-history-continues/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/01/13/the-fastest-energy-ch... costs: https://www.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/11q58pe/price_trends_of_wind_and_solar_vs_nuclear_over/ https://www.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/11q58pe/price_trend...
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
amanaplanacanal 11mo ago
That could possibly be true, if fission is cheaper than solar, wind, and batteries. The renewables are so cheap and quick to provision it's hard to see how fission can compete.

toomuchtodo 11mo ago

Geothermal is fission, and wind, solar, and batteries are fusion at a distance. In both cases, the failure scenarios are benign vs traditional fission generation. It's fine to keep striving for fusion humans control, but the problem (global electrification and transition to low carbon generation) is already solved with the tech we have today. It took the world 68 years to achieve the first 1TW of solar PV. The next 1TW took 2 years. Globally, ~760GW of solar PV is deployed per year (as of this comment), and will at some point hit ~1TW/year of deployment between now and 2030. Geothermal is a great fit for dispatchable power to replace coal and fossil gas today (where able); batteries are almost cheaper than the cost to ship them, but geothermal would also help solve for seasonal deltas in demand vs supply ("diurnal storage"). https://reneweconomy.com.au/it-took-68-years-for-the-world-to-reach-1-terawatt-of-solar-pv-capacity-it-took-just-two-years-to-double-it/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/it-took-68-years-for-the-world-t... https://ember-energy.org/data/2030-global-renewable-target-tracker/ https://ember-energy.org/data/2030-global-renewable-target-t... I also love geothermal for district heating in latitudes that call for it; flooded legacy mines appear to be a potential solution for that use case. Flooded UK coalmines could provide low-carbon cheap heat 'for generations' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45860049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45860049 - November 2025

yawaramin 11mo ago
Failure scenario in modern fission reactors is also benign. Reactors are designed to lock down to prevent any leaks. We deploy solar PV capacity, this doesn't mean we actually get that much power from the deployments. Nuclear fission provides reliable, baseload power, and doesn't require huge battery arrays to compensate for the sun setting or winds calming.
- toomuchtodo 11mo ago
  Enough renewables are deployed annually to replace the global nuclear fission fleet, year after year, even when accounting for capacity factor derating (to make a like for like comparison). The race is over, and renewables (with batteries) won. If you can find someone unsophisticated to invest in a fission reactor that takes billions of dollars and 10-15 years to build, more power to you. There will be no need for it by 2035-2040 when it prepares to send its first kwh to the grid. (and to stay on topic for this thread, geothermal is a component of this when geothermal potential exists, cost is competitive, and dispatachability is a requirement to push out fossil generation in concert with renewables, hydro, legacy nuclear, battery storage discharge, and demand response) https://www.google.com/search?q=baseload+is+a+myth https://www.google.com/search?q=baseload+is+a+myth https://cleantechnica.com/2025/11/15/coal-killing-sodium-ion-energy-storage-is-coming-to-kill-your-coal-power-plants/ https://cleantechnica.com/2025/11/15/coal-killing-sodium-ion... https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/q3-global-power-report-no-fossil-fuel-growth-expected-in-2025/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/q3-global-power-rep... https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-every-hour-of-every-day-is-here-and-it-changes-everything/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e... https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-every-hour-of-every-day-is-here-and-it-changes-everything/chapter-1-how-batteries-will-unlock-solars-true-po/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e... https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec... https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-energyplus-lcoeplus/ https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/levelized-cost-of-e... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/solar-panel-prices-have-fallen-by-around-20-every-time-global-capacity-doubled https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/solar-panel-prices-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44513185 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44513185 (lfp battery storage cost citation in 2025)
  - yawaramin 11mo ago
    > If you can find someone unsophisticated to invest in a fission reactor that takes billions of dollars and 10-15 years to build Unsophisticated investors like the Chinese government? 'Nearly every Chinese nuclear project that has entered service since 2010 has achieved construction in 7 years or less.' https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/chinas-impressive-rate-of-nuclear-construction https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/chinas-impressive-...
cbmuser 11mo ago
Look at Electricity Maps and realize that France is the only large industrial country where electricity generation is permanently carbon-free and cheap. https://particulier.edf.fr/content/dam/2-Actifs/Documents/Offres/Grille_prix_Tarif_Bleu.pdf https://particulier.edf.fr/content/dam/2-Actifs/Documents/Of...
- toomuchtodo 11mo ago
  Yes, but unfortunately that is because it is coasting on decades old labor and capital investment that will not be made again. It is not permanent, as it will cost tens of billions of euros to continue to operate those generators reaching the end of their service life.
- bryanlarsen 11mo ago
  Norway, Iceland and British Columbia are other examples and are more carbon-free than France is. The latter isn't a country and the former don't count as "large industrial"?
andbberger 11mo ago
68 years ago we already had fission plants. the engineering side of energy production has been solved since then, it's all political now
pfdietz 11mo ago
> Geothermal is fission Geothermal is not nuclear fission. The heat comes from a combination of primordial heat (from the gravitational energy turned to heat as the Earth formed) and radioactive decay (which is some combination of alpha and beta decays; spontaneous fission is extremely rare.)

klabb3 11mo ago

Ive been very pro nuclear my whole life, but a part of me is disheartened by the mega projects that commercial fission deployments have become (even if the reasons are bad) that’s a problem that nerfs traditional fission. If nuclear remains both political, extremely bureaucratic and requires public investment, it just won’t be the solution, and not because the tech or physics is bad, but the decision makers & investors can no longer organize large infrastructure projects effectively (except maybe China). This is not unique to nuclear. Having smaller scale local power generation, whether it’s SMRs, solar, wind or geothermal, there’s a huge advantage in terms of economy, investment, and politics.

yawaramin 11mo ago
Nuclear has broad bipartisan support, and the Trump administration is heavily into it, so I wouldn't count it out just yet. If the various Green parties of the Western world ever come into power though, we are cooked.
- klabb3 11mo ago
  But that illustrates the point. Most investors don’t want to put money towards something that may be put on indefinite hold depending on political winds. These projects are often much longer than presidential terms.

thinkcontext 11mo ago

It could be but the US and EU have so far been unable to build commercial fission reactors without going 2x+ over budget in time and money. China is having success but even they are not projected to have nuclear account for more than single digit percentages of their generation. Maybe SMR's, thorium, 4th gen, etc will work out, but maybe not.

ahmeneeroe-v2 11mo ago
The US Navy consistently builds reactors on-time and in-budget
- mr_toad 11mo ago
  There’s something to be said for a standardised design with replaceable parts.
- kragen 11mo ago
  The US and Russian Navies deciding to remain mostly petroleum-fueled is one of the strongest arguments against nuclear becoming very cheap: surely they would do it if it wasn't ruinously expensive, because it eliminates the national security risk of a petroleum blockade and simplifies at-sea logistics immediately.
  - ahmeneeroe-v2 11mo ago
    Don't presume too much about the US Navy's fleet decisions. Using that same logic you could presume that smaller, aged and poorly maintained fleets are advantageous for naval supremacy since that appears to be the choice of the US Navy for a couple generations now. Or you could presume that the complete inability to build a merchant marine fleet was also a strategic advantage!
    - kragen 11mo ago
      It's not just the US Navy. It's also the Russian Navy, the French Navy, the Chinese navy of the PLA, the British Navy, the Indian Navy. If nuclear power were cheaper than oil, or anything other than much more expensive, at least one of those would have gone all-nuclear.

tim333 11mo ago

Solar + wind is being installed at about 100x the rate of fission because it's so expensive. And the differential is only increasing. installs: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/01/13/the-fastest-energy-change-in-history-continues/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/01/13/the-fastest-energy-ch... costs: https://www.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/11q58pe/price_trends_of_wind_and_solar_vs_nuclear_over/ https://www.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/11q58pe/price_trend...

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

amanaplanacanal 11mo ago

That could possibly be true, if fission is cheaper than solar, wind, and batteries. The renewables are so cheap and quick to provision it's hard to see how fission can compete.